Judy Alter, Ph.D.

Judy Alter (Judith B. Alter Ed.D.), emeritus UCLA Professor, began working on election justice issues four days after the CA Oct. 2003 Recall election when Lynn Landes offered compelling evidence about how Diebold machines swung the election away from Bustamante to the current "governor."

Before the Nov. 2004 election she urged elected officials to consider counting voters' filled in sample ballots to check the accuracy of the secret software being used in the election. Jeremiah Akin trained her in the thwarted Recount New Mexico effort. She subsequently analyzed the voting results in Santa Fe NM (posted on Solarbus and freepress) and since January 2005, has given numerous talks about her findings there as a case study of voting irregularities in the 2004 presidential election.

She started Study California Ballots [1] and signed up over 260 volunteers in 16 CA counties to work toward unsealing the 2004 ballots.

In July 2005 some of her volunteers invited her to help audit the San Diego mayoral election where she led 23 volunteers from 7 counties in parallel elections at 5 polling sites (11 precincts). She directed a partial inconclusive recount there in Aug. 2005.

She conducted 8 parallel elections in Los Angeles County for the special election in Nov. 2005 and helped set up others in four other CA counties (total 19).

Since then she continues to work in Los Angeles County lobbying against ES&S precinct scanners for LA for Nov. 2006; helping technical observers monitor election equipment in election headquarters; educating the public in more than 45 talks; analyzing the results of 1% manual recount and snap tallies; and circulating citizen petitions for hand marked, hand counted ballots at the precinct level.